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The elite group category of people who cannot convince their employers of their programming skills without the certificate

Actaully, it is probably nearly the opposite of this. Programmers clearly have a low opinion of what certification is worth, but your employer might want to pay to have you certified so they could pitch their services as having so many ZCE programmers on staff, etc.

Programmers clearly have a low opinion of what certification is worth, but your employer might want to pay to have you certified so they could pitch their services as having so many ZCE programmers on staff, etc.

That doesn't invalidate what I said: your boss can't convince his client (which is like his employer) that he has enough programming skills in-house without the certificate.

Ah well, that's just the way things work in the industry nowadays I'm afraid.

That still validates my statement: your boss can't convince his client (which is like his employer) that he has enough programming skills in-house without the certificate.

so what? is that a bad thing?
would you use a home inspector who didn't have his license? would you go to a doctor that didn't have his medical degree? would you hire a lawyer that didn't pass the bar?

tons of lawyers pass the bar exam, are there better lawyers than others? of course, but passing the bar establishes you have a certain understanding of the law, programming certifications demonstrate you have a certain level of understanding of the language you have a cert in. There will always be people who have a higher level of talent but an exam sets the minimum bar you have to pass.

Looking back at people quoting what I said, I'm not sure my focus is still the same. Sure, the test can't match up with employing someone for a month on a trial contract, but it doesn't make the test worthless.

There are quite a few questions meant to distinguish between the top-tier developers and the rest. However, at the moment, there is no public score except pass or fail. So, a top-tier developer will get a higher score on the exam, but someone who barely passes has the same public score - pass.

There is an ongoing discussion about what to do about this particular scenario, whether it's a large problem that needs to be solved, etc. I'd be happy to hear opinions on this, and I'll certainly pass your suggestions along to the board.

Unless there is an attempt to statistically validate the test score against job performance outcomes, i think it would be best not to publish scores.

I have to say the quality of the sample questions has contributed negatively to my attitude toward the test.

so what? is that a bad thing?
would you use a home inspector who didn't have his license? would you go to a doctor that didn't have his medical degree? would you hire a lawyer that didn't pass the bar?

tons of lawyers pass the bar exam, are there better lawyers than others? of course, but passing the bar establishes you have a certain understanding of the law, programming certifications demonstrate you have a certain level of understanding of the language you have a cert in. There will always be people who have a higher level of talent but an exam sets the minimum bar you have to pass.

The difference between a good 'programmer' is the approach, in my opinion. In different languages we approach different tasks & challenges slightly differently, gaining experience from one to another. From this you tend to adopt common method's to tackle common tasks. Whilst some aspects maybe easier in one language and a little more difficult in another, the approach is always the same.

As mentioned several times, knowing the language constructs, functions, syntax does not justify a decent 'programmer'. Syntax is a trivial aspect of any language, in contrast to the approach taken to resolve a particular task or problem. Although this is a very difficult thing to measure something missing for example is handling Hierarchical Data in databases.